Smelt Avocado Pain Grillé

"Pain Grillé" in French means "Toast", but literally means "Grilled Bread" and that is exactly what we did!

This was a creation by Chris and I after having tasted something similar at Bar Jules a lovely restaurant in Hayes Valley. We were so enthralled by it during our dinner there that we decided we had to try to re-create it for his birthday party this June 4th. At Bar Jules they were made with fresh anchovies, but since we could not find fresh anchovies anywhere in town, we settled for something very similar, Smelt.

Smelt is usually fried and eaten whole but this dish required something more refined and dainty. I personally filleted 22 smelts for this dish, a task I had little to no experience with yet took on with great confidence.

All photos below depicting the process were taken by Chris' cousin Sherman and Chris' friend Ninh.


The second little fishie to suffer his fate.


Almost done, that's a lot of heads... The process is very meticulous and intricate.
These are very small fishes.


All done! They look so sweet and fresh!


How many are there? 22? Actually they short-changed me.... there are only 21.


I'm quite proud of myself.


Grilling the bread. We used Pain au Levain, which is perfect for this dish.


Chris lightly pan frying the fishies. They only took about a minute or less
to cook as they just melt like butter! Before frying we seasoned the smelt
lightly with salt and pepper.


The grilled bread got rubbed with fresh garlic cloves and then sliced avocado
seasoned with lemon and salt and pepper. Then topped with the freshly fried
smelt. Everyone contributed to the stacking process. It was like an assembly line!


The final moment, before disappearing into thin air! They were as good if not
tastier than they look, which says a lot, since they looked quite lovely. We
were all very proud of ourselves, as everyone contributed to making this such a success.